Paul, 74, from the UK, spent 28 years working in hotel management and 20 years in accounting before retiring. Here he shares the story of his upbringing, how his passion for music grew and more about his love of learning Opera.
“I grew up in Wales just after the second world war. My mother’s family was from Llanrwst in North Wales but my father, who was in the RAF, was posted to St Athan in South Wales before going to Singapore and taking my mother with him. I grew up with an aunt and my grandmother – that is when I wasn’t a boarder at my preparatory school in Bangor.
It was in the summer holidays of my first year at prep school that music first made a real impression on me. My aunt lived on an estate of prefabs and I can remember that when going to the local shop, from each open window and in the shop I would hear the BBC Light Programme (the wireless with just three programmes was about the only domestic entertainment) and the two musicals that dominated the airwaves that year were Rogers & Hammerstein’s ‘Oklahoma!’ and ‘Bless the Bride’ a romance by Vivien Ellis. Seventy years on they are still amongst my favourites.
The school in Bangor was run by a man, his wife and her brother – all Oxford MAs – and three or four other teachers whose only qualifications were a love of teaching, general knowledge and enthusiasm. My brother and I were sent there because my grandmother’s twin sisters had taught there. The headmaster of this school felt that music was an essential part of a child’s education and although none of the teachers had any particular musical skills the headmaster did his best and every day we used to sing. Once a term there was an outing and that usually meant Gilbert & Sullivan which was carefully explained to us, along with excerpts on records, so that by the time of the performance we all knew the piece quite well. In the ‘50s G&S was still on the curriculum and right through my schooling I got to know and admire the Savoy Operas.
I well remember being taken by an aunt to see ‘The Merry Widow’ at Sadler’s Wells, but my first ‘real’ opera was ‘Aida’ complete with horses, camels, a couple of elephants and a cast of hundreds, in the magnificent setting of the Roman arena in Verona. This, I realised, was the height of sophisticated entertainment and I was hooked. I couldn’t possibly afford the expensive new long-playing records but on market stalls, for 9d or 1/-, you could find old unwanted 78 rpm discs of stylish singers of the past singing old favourites. I built up quite a collection.
After leaving school I studied in London and stayed there working for some years and took every opportunity to go to every show I could and the opera at Sadler’s Wells and later at the Coliseum when English National Opera moved there. This was a time when, not only were there many wonderful shows, but ticket prices for the theatre and English National Opera were more affordable and my partner and I would go regularly.
Moving from the Metropolis to rural Somerset was something of a cultural shock but the hard work of successfully running a small hotel largely overcame that and anyway I soon learned that it was not a cultural desert and that Welsh National Opera occasionally visited Bristol which was not too far away. After seventeen years of running the hotel, we moved into Bristol and I started work as accounts and payroll clerk and at the same time completing a Social Studies course with the Open University. My aim of a complete career change came to nothing but I did end up working for a completely different company each day of the week which made for an interesting working environment and it meant that I could indulge my passion for opera.
Not very long before retirement, I was introduced to the University of the Third Age – U3A – when I was asked to give a talk. I’d heard of U3A before but with this introduction, I saw that this organisation was one I would join immediately on retirement. Here was an organisation that had dozens of part-time courses on all sorts of fascinating subjects, all to be had for a pittance. As soon as I could I signed up for an opera course and a couple of others. In the spirit of U3A, it wasn’t very long before I was tutoring the opera course which made me learn all the more.
Learning has always been a bit of a bug for me. Acquiring knowledge is not only valuable but the process is fascinating and I can happily spend my time learning how something is done or how something works. So when I saw in Opera magazine that FutureLearn was offering a short online course ‘Inside Opera’, I very quickly signed up for it and I’m learning even more about my favourite subject.”
Inspired by Paul’s story?
Take a look at the course he took:
Inside Opera: Why Does It Matter?
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